[Qgis-developer] Re: [QGIS Commit] r13951 - in trunk/qgis: python/core src/app src/core

[John C. Tull]

On Jul 23, 2010, at 1:05 AM, Martin Dobias wrote:

> Hi William,
> 
> On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 3:57 PM, William Kyngesburye
> <woklist at kyngchaos.com> wrote:
>> So, I have been interested for a while in the possibility to set a different path more appropriate for the system, like the user application data folder on Windows and the user application support folder on OS X.
>> 
>> Bummer, looks like this update is just for setting the path at runtime, which is not really possible, or at least difficult, to do for the OS X application (you just don't normally start applications with switches, but you can from a Terminal, yuck).
>> 
>> I found this patch ticket for compiling in a system-specific default.
>> 
>> http://trac.osgeo.org/qgis/ticket/1442
>> 
>> It only has a Windows default, but a Mac default should be easy to add.  I wonder if it could be combined with this runtime switch change?
> 
> If there are no objections from other developers, I think for qgis 1.6
> we can alter the qgis user settings directories per platform as
> follows:
> - unix: ~/.qgis (as before)
> - win: ~/Application Data/qgis
> - mac: ~/Library/Application Support/QGIS
> 
> I just wonder how much this will confuse users as with the upgrade to
> 1.6 they will loose their locally installed plugins, custom styles,
> CRS and some other stuff...

Hi Martin,

From and OS X perspective, I think this would be a good change. A note in a readme file could be supplied with 1.6 binaries and it could also be noted in the documentation. That should suffice to cover the change.

Cheers,
John